Post by Tim Drake on Oct 1, 2015 9:46:34 GMT
GENERAL INFORMATION
FULL NAME: Tim Drake
CODENAME: Robin
AGE: 14
GENDER: Male
ALIASES: The Boy Wonder, Legendary Terror of the Night, Alvin Draper
RELATIONSHIP STATUS: It's Complicated
ALIGNMENT: Vigilante
AFFILIATION: Batfamily, Young Justice
CHARACTERISTICS
HEIGHT: 4'10"
WEIGHT: 106lbs
EYES: Blue
HAIR: Black
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: Between his size and his looks, Tim is very easily mistaken for being years younger than he is, ranging anywhere from several years to just a few. As Robin it’s usually the latter, maybe because of the way his mask alters the lines of his face, but that can tend to magnify how young he looks without the mask sometimes, too. To be fair, he is only 4’10” – and man, oh, man, is he looking forward to the day he hits his growth spurt. He holds himself well enough to make up for his small size, though, the training in gymnastics and martial arts giving him steadily increasing grace and his air that of quiet self-confidence and the subtle elegance of a born aristocrat - not that he’s entirely aware of that last part; Tim’s uncomfortable with the idea that coming from money makes him any different from anyone else. His Robin training has also had the effect of making him much heavier than he looks, thanks to all the muscle: he was a solid 99 pounds at last weigh-in.
Dark black hair and startlingly blue eyes, Tim hasn’t quite grown out of “adorable” and into “handsome” yet, but the promise is there. He prefers to dress down whenever he can – jeans and sneakers, t-shirts or long-sleeved shirts depending on the weather, hoodies or jackets as needed. He likes things that are easy to run around and move in, layers when he can get away with it, and has a surprisingly good sense for what will look good together, but he doesn’t really think about it much as long as he doesn’t look ridiculous.
His Robin uniform is a bit different from Dick and Jason’s version. While the red tunic stayed, a green, short-sleeved under armor was added, and Tim wears a pair of green leggings in place of the shortpants, and the pixie boots have been replaced with a pair more akin to ninja tabi. His cape is black lined in yellow for better camouflage, with yellow piping on the high-necked collar, and his domino mask is green. Like Batman and Nightwing, Robin’s uniform is designed with protection in mind – the ballistics layer of his body armor is backed by an anti-blade layer and it’s both fire resistant and hides a gorget in the collar. His cape is a Kevlar-Nomax blend, while his gloves have ceramic armor inserts to further protect his hands. The R of his emblem is also a disguised shuriken – a last-ditch weapon, if Tim needs one.
He’s gotten quite a few scars since he started working as Robin, some of which are worse than others, but most are easily hidden by his clothes or old enough and/or faint enough to be missed at first glance.
PERSONALITY: Despite his age, Tim is actually very good at taking care of himself. It’s not just because he’s smart – and he is very, incredibly smart – but also because of his desire not to cause anyone any trouble: he figures everyone is already busy enough without having to look after him, too. As a result, he’s surprisingly mature for his age, though that doesn’t mean he doesn’t act it. He’s a natural leader when the situation calls for it, but he also has no problem surrendering control and following stronger personalities. He’s very shy around those he doesn’t know well, and can be more than a little awkward at times, though his self-confidence has definitely taken an upswing since putting on the Robin suit.
Tim is also something of a perfectionist, at least where it applies to himself – if he does something, he wants to do it right. No matter what it is that he does or learns, he’ll keep working at it until he meets his own high standards. This determination and focus translates to almost everything else Tim sets his mind to, sometimes resulting in a kind of tunnel vision: even if he’s doing something else, he’s still fixated more on the whatever-it-is that he’s prioritized - even unintentionally - as more important, and there’s very little he won’t do in pursuit of his goals, as long as it’s got a good probability of being possible and it won’t hurt anyone else. Unlike the Robins before him, Tim was a detective long before he approached Bruce, and it shows in the way he likes to work through problems.
Overall, though, Tim is a quiet but relatively cheerful kid. He’s an optimist at heart, though it’s tempered by a strong dose of realism, and he’ll always hope for the best possible outcome – and help it along, if he can. He has an unwavering sense of duty, and though he cares a lot about others (more than he really cares for himself, honestly), he doesn’t quite know what to do with big shows of physical affection most of the time. While he’s aware he’s bright, he doesn’t quite realize the extent of it: humble and self-effacing, he thinks it’s just because he’s a big dork. He won't admit that to most people.
HABITS/QUIRKS: His favorite kind of pizza is Canadian bacon and artichoke hearts, and prefers vanilla ice cream.
He has a hard time going to sleep before four am, but most mornings he’ll be up by seven or eight anyway. He’ll take a nap in the afternoon if it’s really necessary, but otherwise he lives on coffee and tea - he mostly prefers coffee when he’s working on a case, and tea when he’s relaxing, but that’s not a hard and fast rule. His coffee can actually be used as a red flag for his health and mood, though: if he’s too stressed, upset with himself, or has gone more than eighteen hours without sleep, he’ll drink his coffee black.
He’s not exactly adverse to touch at all - or at least, not touch meant to hurt - but he’s not really used to a lot of it, and is always uncomfortable with it when it comes from someone he doesn’t know or trust well. The only exception he’ll make is for civilians who require the comfort or reassurance, and even then, it’s mostly for children. He's more comfortable with people he knows well, though, and he'll talk to those people a lot more as well.
Tim’s also very neat and orderly - it’s not Obsessive-Compulsive, but it is pathological - but he does his best to hide it, deliberately leaving things laying around or tipped over (still in order) despite it annoying him so that he looks like just a normal kid. He does it less lately, but his need to hide is nearly as ingrained as the need to be neat by now.
POWERS: N/A
STANDARD SKILLS/ABILITIES: Tim has been trained in multiple forms of martial arts by Bruce Wayne, Lady Shiva, and Dick Grayson - among others - and is very highly proficient. He's not exactly one of the world's greatest martial artist yet, true, but he certainly seems to be heading that way. And nine times out of ten, chances are pretty high that Tim will either kick your ass wholesale or keep you at a stalemate until Batman and/or Nightwing show up. Then they’ll kick your ass wholesale. Tim prefers a “whatever works” approach to combat, even if “whatever works” is less martial arts and more flat out street fighting, and he isn’t above trickery and fighting dirty. Giving him a bō automatically levels him up by five.
While Tim came pre-installed with mad computer skills and l33t hacking ability, and with Barabara’s guidance, he’s only gotten better since then. He’s a natural hand at anything technological, both in hardware and software, and he loves learning about it all. Don’t tell Batman, but his favorite hero is actually Ted Kord, the Blue Beetle – Tim can only hope that he’ll be half that good with tech someday. Helping Batman with the Batmobile is making him love mechanics just as much.
Tim is wickedly, crazily smart – he tends to catch onto just about any subject he wants to learn with relative ease, and he can retain all the information with near-perfect recall. Detective work comes to him the most easily, perhaps unsurprisingly, and he’s incredibly observant. In a fight, he’s just as liable to out-think his opponent to catch them in a trap as he is to beat them in straight combat, and he has a very strong grasp on strategy and tactics. He needs practice and training to really excel, but he’s got mentors for that. He’s still learning a lot of things, but at his age, that’s okay. He know he has plenty of time and really great teachers. Anything Batman thinks he needs to know, Tim will learn.
Also, Tim is an excellent artist. He prefers photography, but he can use more or less any medium well.
WEAKNESSES/LIMITATIONS: Tim is prone towards insecurity – he really, really wants to be good enough, but sometimes he just finds it impossible that he ever will be. Guilt can get to him sometimes, too, particularly when it comes to keeping important secrets from people he feels he owes his loyalty to. The guilt will eat at him, make sleeping and eating difficult prospects, but it won’t stop him from keeping the secrets he feels need to be kept. He’ll also keep injuries or illness secret sometimes, in an effort to keep people from worrying or to keep from just plain letting them down. Which, considering his occasionally poor self-preservation instincts, can be more than a little troublesome.
He can also tend to be awkward with people, especially strangers, and as observant as he is about people’s actions and behaviours towards other people, he’s far, far less adept at noticing when these things are directed at him. Unless you’re hostile. He’s just as good at noticing things as usual when there’s a chance you might kill him.
And he’s nosy. Very nosy. If he’s curious about something, he’ll generally find a way to discover what he wants to know, even if there's a chance it could land him in trouble.
HISTORY
Jack Drake was the heir to the newly Fortune 500 company Drake Industries , and a well-respected archeologist and businessman both when he met fellow archeologist and historian Janet Draper, a fiercely beautiful – and fiercely intelligent – woman at an opening at the Archaeological Museum of Iraklion in Crete, Greece. The romance that followed was like something out of a modern day fairy tale, full of exotic locales, intriguing mysteries, royalty both modern and historical, grand parties, opulence, and, after three years of dating, an absolutely gorgeous wedding.
After their honeymoon tour of Europe, the newlyweds returned to Jack’s hometown of Gotham City and purchased an estate in the outskirt of Bristol to build their dream home on. Their timing was good - just a few months after their new home’s completion, Jack and Janet had their first and only child: Timothy Jackson Drake.
Tim’s youngest years were spent mostly with a succession of nannies, as his parents had a habit of firing the last every time they returned home from their trips in order to look after him themselves. But, more absorbed in their work, both business and archeological, and each other than they were interested in Tim, Jack and Janet were rarely home for more than a total four or five months over an entire year, stopping home only for weeks or days at a time between trips. Even when they were home, their attention was largely occupied by something they deemed a higher priority. As the quality of the nannies hired tended to vary – Janet sometimes forgot to hire someone until the last minute, and didn’t have time to be choosy – Tim learned fast to look after himself as much as possible. He also learned to savor the time and attention his parents actually afforded him.
It was during one such instance that Jack and Janet brought a six year old Tim to see Haly’s Circus. In order to commemorate the event, since it was Tim’s first time at a circus, and to make sure Tim knew that all the performers were just regular people and nothing to be afraid of (which Tim wasn’t, but didn’t want to tell his parents and risk hurting their feelings since they were so convinced he was), Janet approached the circuses’ headlining acrobat act, the Flying Graysons, for a photo. The Graysons agreed, and Tim was introduced to their son, Dick. Dick Grayson was the kindest, most amazing person ever, in Tim’s opinion, and it hit him hard when he saw the older boy’s parents die. That night also marked the first time Tim ever saw Batman, and though he was terrified at first, his fears quickly subsided when he saw the hero comforting Dick over his loss.
It was, perhaps, inevitable that it would happen: Janet forgot to hire Tim a new nanny entirely. It didn’t occur to her at all until half an hour before she and Jack had to catch a flight for Tel Aviv, and finding someone to watch the seven-year-old Tim for the two months they’d be gone on that kind of sort notice was just impossible. Finally, she wound up promising the housekeeper a bonus to just check in on Tim a couple of times a day and ensure he had until she could make other arrangements from abroad. Tim, in the meantime, would have to look after himself.
The ‘other arrangements’ were never made.
When, on their return home, they found that Tim had managed to do just fine with the bare-bones arrangement, Jack and Janet decided to leave it be – it was simpler than going through the whole process of hiring new nannies, and Tim didn’t mind. So instead, they hired someone to keep the kitchen stocked, a driver to get Tim to and from school and whatever extracurriculars he chose to take, and instructed the house staff to keep an eye out for him. It was lonely, not having anyone around just for him anymore, but Tim thought it was a fair trade off: it meant his parents called and e-mailed more often.
The Batman was a more steady presence in Tim’s life, in a manner of speaking. He was a dark solace to a lonely boy in need of a hero (because of course a hero would care, no matter what), and when the sunny boy wonder Robin joined his side, Tim was very much hooked. He spent years learning how to read between the lines of stories and news reports to follow the Batman through the news. The day that there was actual [i[footage[/quote][/i] of his heroes was a red letter day if there ever was one in Tim’s book, and he was ecstatic to watch it.
And then Robin did a quadruple somersault. Just like that, Tim knew who Robin was. It wasn’t much of a leap from there to figure out Batman’s identity, too. Once he was in on the secret, it wasn’t hard to find some actual evidence to back his deductions up. Dick was still the kindest person Tim had ever known, and finding him in Robin was a comfort. He redoubled his efforts to follow the pair more effectively, taking up his camera and climbing through the city like an expansive, extremely dangerous jungle gym in search of the best angles and lighting. The pictures he took were like a lifeline - certainly there was no one at home to care that an eight-year-old boy was running around the streets of the world’s most dangerous city until the wee hours of the morning - and he liked the adventure and challenge of it. Gotham was a different world at night. He also worked to hone his computer skills: learning how to hack into other computers to help him solve the cases Batman was working on, ways to get around security systems so he could trail the vigilantes easier. Batman and Robin weren’t just imaginary friends anymore; they were real people, people he knew, if only distantly. They became almost like a surrogate family, despite never knowing that Tim even existed.
It was through the lens of his camera and through word of mouth that Tim watched Dick break away from Bruce to become Nightwing, moving to New York to work with the Titans full time. That was also how he met the new Robin, Jason Todd. Jason was so very different from Dick, more pure strength and slightly less grace, but Tim could hardly blame him for that. No one, but no one, could move like Dick did; Dick moved like he was born to it, and not even Batman himself could match him. Jason was cool, though, and after meeting him at a gala Tim’s parents brought him to, Tim learned to be fond of the new Robin very quickly. It was devastating when Jason died. Even worse was watching the effect the loss was having on Bruce. Batman was getting steadily more erratic - more dangerous to both himself and to others, reckless and careless to the extreme. He was missing things, important things, and Tim finally had to start giving him new, more obvious clues in order to point the way. When Tim finally decided that that course of action wasn’t helping and wasn’t a long-term solution - Batman was a better detective than Tim was by far, and Tim was still sometimes wrong - he went looking for Dick.
Tim had taken several trips out to New York to see Nightwing at work during school vacations, when no one would realize he’d gone, so getting around wasn’t an issue. Actually locating Dick, however, was a little tougher - he wasn’t at Titans Tower, or at home. Tim finally tracked him down to Haly’s Circus and got down to business: he had to come back to Gotham, to be Robin again. Batman needed a Robin. Dick agreed to returning to Gotham easily enough, but becoming Robin again? He refused. Bring Tim back with him to the Batcave, Dick went to help Batman with Two-Face. Worried for them both and with a little convincing from Alfred, Tim donned the Robin uniform and was able to rescue both of his childhood heroes and help save the day. The thirteen-year-old also became the new Robin - on a trial basis only, Bruce stipulated.
Tim trained for months with Bruce, Dick, and Alfred, both physically and mentally, never once going out in the field. It was incredibly intense, though it turned out Tim knew far more about computers and the like than all three older men combined by this point.
Tim didn’t mind being stuck in the Cave at first. His primary job was, after all, to keep Batman grounded - he was a constant reminder to Bruce that he needed to be cautious with his own safety, because Tim was depending on him. But after Tim’s parents’ plane went down in Haiti and they were both kidnapped by the Obeah Man, it was much harder for him to do nothing: Jack had come back from the encounter comatose. Janet came back in a casket. Tim persevered as best he could, though, trying to obey orders. But when he solved a case involving the Scarecrow and couldn’t get a hold of Batman to warn him about the danger, Tim couldn’t do it anymore - he had to go help, even if it meant getting fired.
Instead, it got him a new uniform.
Bruce had assured Tim that he was ready to become Robin - he was looking for someone with smarts, not just guts, and Tim, he claimed, had those and more - but Tim was a little more uncertain. It was what he had wanted, yes, but he’d be defending himself and others out there, and he wasn’t entirely confident he’d be able to do it as well as he wanted to. As Bruce expected him to. For his final bit of intensive training, Bruce sent Tim overseas, where his first stop would be Paris to learn under the Chinese martial arts master Rahul Lama. It didn’t quite work out as planned: just a few weeks in, Tim ran afoul of King Snake, a criminal underlord. King Snake was, in turn, being shadowed by Lady Shiva - one of the world’s greatest martial artists and most deadly assassins. In their pursuit of Snake, Shiva ended up joining Tim and a man named Clyde Rawlins (who wanted revenge against Snake for his family’s death) and, seeing potential in him, taking Tim under her wing as a student. It was her who insisted Tim begin using a weapon, and offered him a choice from her armory. Tim chose the bō: it was primarily non-lethal. Shiva was disappointed, but let the choice stand.
Tim and Clyde stayed with Shiva for over a month while she trained Tim to really fight. She was extremely thorough in her lessons, particularly in hand-to-hand and the bō, since those were what Tim would be using the most. It was as much for Shiva’s pride as it was for Tim’s benefit; she had a high reputation to uphold, and no student of hers was going to be anything less than lethal.
When they finally moved on to take down Snake, they found that he wasn’t just dealing in heroin, like they’d thought. He was also planning to release a particularly virulent strain of the bubonic plague. The trio followed Snake to Hong Kong, where he planned on releasing the disease. Shiva continued Tim’s training there while they planned their assault. At the final confrontation, however, Tim refused to follow Shiva’s orders to kill Snake, and returned to Bruce’s side in Gotham. Now he felt ready to be Robin.
Batman had strict orders for his new Robin, however: whenever Tim came across a known killer, he was to retreat immediately and call for help. That wasn’t always doable, like when the Joker started on a spree while Batman was out of reach on JLA business and Nightwing away with the Titans, leaving Tim to deal with him alone (what was he supposed to do? Just let the Joker keep killing?), but he managed alright.
Tim only started really working on his own after Bane broke Bruce's back, however, since Jean-Paul Valley chased him out of the Cave. He worked mostly in Gotham Heights and the nearby neighborhoods, staying mostly out of AzBat's way until Bruce's eventual return. He worked with Dick until Bruce returned to the cowl for good, though he also continued his solo work.
His role during the first Clench epidemic was two-fold, as he was sent out of Gotham during the plague's beginning to hunt down a survivor of a different outbreak. He teamed up with Catwoman for the hunt, but has to return to Gotham before the survivor was found. From there, he turned to helping with the rioters - and got the Clench himself for his troubles. He spent the rest of the epidemic in the Cave, being cared for by Alfred, and was only spared dying because Azrael located a cure in time. Despite his weakened state, Tim returned to assisting Batman and the others with the aftermath. During the second, he was in a race against time: if they couldn't find a cure for the new strain, then the virus would reactivate in Tim's body and kill him. Luckily, they did manage, and Tim got to break into the Louvre, fight ninja, and stop Ra's al Ghul from releasing the virus worldwide, to boot.
During the Genesis crisis, Tim failed to save a criminal drowning, and despite the fact that the hood had been trying to kill him moments earlier, the failure haunted him. After assisting Nightwing in stopping a war, he requested to be dropped back off in Paris, needing a sabbatical to sort himself out again. He went to train with the Iron Master, and not long after, got caught up in helping one of his fellow students. This sent him into another war zone, and more encounters with Lady Shiva and King Snake, but it did ultimately accomplish was Tim had set out for: he was ready to be Robin properly again.
He was on the plane when the Cataclysm struck, and though his flight was diverted to Bludhaven, Tim booked it back to Gotham to lend a hand.
WRITING SAMPLE
Project Cadmus’ main labs were in Iowa. Specifically, eastern Iowa. From a security standpoint, it was a good place to be: the wide, open plains and total lack of anything made it pretty much impossible for anything to approach via land or sky without being seen, and the plain two story building was heavily fortified, with three rings of progressively more barbed, electrified fencing. Each ring has its own patrol of armed guards and attack dogs, and the security on the building itself covered both the ground-level and the rooftop, all of which was organized in a series of staggered, randomized patterns. Ground sensors were buried in a net six feet down to prevent tunneling attempts, and the walls of the building itself were made of concrete blocks reinforced with titanium struts. Inside, more guards patrolled. Motion detectors and laser grids secured the elevators with calibrated pressure plates at the bottom of each bay, and twenty-four hour surveillance covered each and every stairwell, as well as most of the rest of the grounds and building. Authorized entry required stopping at for different checkpoints, a security badge, and both a fingerprint and retina scan on file before even getting to the front door. Unauthorized entry was met with lethal force.
Seriously, there were even signs on the outer most ring of fencing. Trespassers will be shot and everything. There was a Lord of the Rings joke in there somewhere, Robin just knew it. Either that or Star Wars.
Everything could be related back to Star Wars sooner or later.
Still. Robin didn’t really care to get shot. Lucky for him, however, the electrical station that housed the main transformers supporting the grid in this area had a lot less security.
“Robin,” Batman murmured beside him, and Robin took a silent, steady breath, making himself relax before getting into position and nodding. Batman hit the detonator. Fifteen miles away, the device wired into the electrical station’s mainframe activated. It took thirty seconds to hit the labs, and Batman and Robin were already moving when the floodlights went down, out of the small copse of trees and over the first fence, armor and gauntlets more than enough protection from the barbed wire, then fast across the gap to the second. A quick toss of a pellet of sleeping gas to down the guard on the other side, then up and over the second and third. They grappled to the building’s roof, splitting up to take the guards there from the shadows, Robin moving into the elevator mechanical room and through the grating to the elevator shaft. The electricity went back up a second later, and Robin got attached his line to the winch to start the ride down to meet the elevator itself.
He was on his own from here. Batman hadn’t liked it, but this was the cleanest, quietest way in, and Robin was the only one who fit through the grating fast enough.
Eight floors down, Robin touched silently down on the elevator roof and loosed his line, glancing briefly up as he did. It was official – he was in the underground lab facilities. Now he needed a computer terminal he could hack into and download the information he needed from. He startled a little as the elevator started to move again, catching his balance quickly and dropping into a crouch. Down. They were going down, and Robin counted floors.
Nine… Ten… Eleven… Twelve… Thirteen… Fourteen… Fifteen…
It stopped at twenty-six. Robin waited, counting off a minute in his head to allow people to disembark. He used the next two minutes to patch into the camera on the elevator and set it to a loop, letting everyone clear off, then used the roof hatch to drop down into the elevator cab. According to the information Oracle had gotten them, there weren’t any security cameras or guards this far down, so Robin hit the button to open the doors and stepped out into the hall, cape falling closed around his shoulders in a comforting shroud.
There were a few hallways branching off of the elevator bank. Robin eyed the carpet critically for a few seconds, then picked the one with the least wear: less people used it, so there was less chance of anyone coming down. The corridor was long, wide and empty like the halls leading down into the Gotham Morgue, no doors to break the monotony. Just one, at the very end, locked against stray visitors by a DNA-encoded lock. Robin frowned briefly – he wasn’t getting past that easily – then looked up, confirming that this hall boasted the same drop ceiling that the rest of the hallway boasted. He smirked faintly.
People were stupid.
He balanced carefully on the piping as he reached back down to slide the tile he’d come through back into place, then crawled through to the other side of the door and dropped back down, landing in a crouch. Robin froze for a second as a hiss of air shattered the quiet, muscles tense. When nothing immediately happened, he straightened slowly, staring at the equipment and wiring lining the walls before slowly turning around, only briefly registering the computer terminal he glanced by.
There was a glass tube that stretched from floor to ceiling in the center of the room, the oxygenated solution inside of it diffusing the ambient light coming from the machinery encasing the top and bottom. And suspended there, floating in the center, was a boy. Robin took a brief second to hope that whatever he’d landed on to make that hiss, it hadn’t been terribly important. Or attached to an alarm.
Batman is so going to kill me.
OOC INFO
NAME: Loki
AGE: 25
E-MAIL (OPTIONAL): gotham.redbird@gmail.com
AIM (OPTIONAL):
FULL NAME: Tim Drake
CODENAME: Robin
AGE: 14
GENDER: Male
ALIASES: The Boy Wonder, Legendary Terror of the Night, Alvin Draper
RELATIONSHIP STATUS: It's Complicated
ALIGNMENT: Vigilante
AFFILIATION: Batfamily, Young Justice
CHARACTERISTICS
HEIGHT: 4'10"
WEIGHT: 106lbs
EYES: Blue
HAIR: Black
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: Between his size and his looks, Tim is very easily mistaken for being years younger than he is, ranging anywhere from several years to just a few. As Robin it’s usually the latter, maybe because of the way his mask alters the lines of his face, but that can tend to magnify how young he looks without the mask sometimes, too. To be fair, he is only 4’10” – and man, oh, man, is he looking forward to the day he hits his growth spurt. He holds himself well enough to make up for his small size, though, the training in gymnastics and martial arts giving him steadily increasing grace and his air that of quiet self-confidence and the subtle elegance of a born aristocrat - not that he’s entirely aware of that last part; Tim’s uncomfortable with the idea that coming from money makes him any different from anyone else. His Robin training has also had the effect of making him much heavier than he looks, thanks to all the muscle: he was a solid 99 pounds at last weigh-in.
Dark black hair and startlingly blue eyes, Tim hasn’t quite grown out of “adorable” and into “handsome” yet, but the promise is there. He prefers to dress down whenever he can – jeans and sneakers, t-shirts or long-sleeved shirts depending on the weather, hoodies or jackets as needed. He likes things that are easy to run around and move in, layers when he can get away with it, and has a surprisingly good sense for what will look good together, but he doesn’t really think about it much as long as he doesn’t look ridiculous.
His Robin uniform is a bit different from Dick and Jason’s version. While the red tunic stayed, a green, short-sleeved under armor was added, and Tim wears a pair of green leggings in place of the shortpants, and the pixie boots have been replaced with a pair more akin to ninja tabi. His cape is black lined in yellow for better camouflage, with yellow piping on the high-necked collar, and his domino mask is green. Like Batman and Nightwing, Robin’s uniform is designed with protection in mind – the ballistics layer of his body armor is backed by an anti-blade layer and it’s both fire resistant and hides a gorget in the collar. His cape is a Kevlar-Nomax blend, while his gloves have ceramic armor inserts to further protect his hands. The R of his emblem is also a disguised shuriken – a last-ditch weapon, if Tim needs one.
He’s gotten quite a few scars since he started working as Robin, some of which are worse than others, but most are easily hidden by his clothes or old enough and/or faint enough to be missed at first glance.
PERSONALITY: Despite his age, Tim is actually very good at taking care of himself. It’s not just because he’s smart – and he is very, incredibly smart – but also because of his desire not to cause anyone any trouble: he figures everyone is already busy enough without having to look after him, too. As a result, he’s surprisingly mature for his age, though that doesn’t mean he doesn’t act it. He’s a natural leader when the situation calls for it, but he also has no problem surrendering control and following stronger personalities. He’s very shy around those he doesn’t know well, and can be more than a little awkward at times, though his self-confidence has definitely taken an upswing since putting on the Robin suit.
Tim is also something of a perfectionist, at least where it applies to himself – if he does something, he wants to do it right. No matter what it is that he does or learns, he’ll keep working at it until he meets his own high standards. This determination and focus translates to almost everything else Tim sets his mind to, sometimes resulting in a kind of tunnel vision: even if he’s doing something else, he’s still fixated more on the whatever-it-is that he’s prioritized - even unintentionally - as more important, and there’s very little he won’t do in pursuit of his goals, as long as it’s got a good probability of being possible and it won’t hurt anyone else. Unlike the Robins before him, Tim was a detective long before he approached Bruce, and it shows in the way he likes to work through problems.
Overall, though, Tim is a quiet but relatively cheerful kid. He’s an optimist at heart, though it’s tempered by a strong dose of realism, and he’ll always hope for the best possible outcome – and help it along, if he can. He has an unwavering sense of duty, and though he cares a lot about others (more than he really cares for himself, honestly), he doesn’t quite know what to do with big shows of physical affection most of the time. While he’s aware he’s bright, he doesn’t quite realize the extent of it: humble and self-effacing, he thinks it’s just because he’s a big dork. He won't admit that to most people.
HABITS/QUIRKS: His favorite kind of pizza is Canadian bacon and artichoke hearts, and prefers vanilla ice cream.
He has a hard time going to sleep before four am, but most mornings he’ll be up by seven or eight anyway. He’ll take a nap in the afternoon if it’s really necessary, but otherwise he lives on coffee and tea - he mostly prefers coffee when he’s working on a case, and tea when he’s relaxing, but that’s not a hard and fast rule. His coffee can actually be used as a red flag for his health and mood, though: if he’s too stressed, upset with himself, or has gone more than eighteen hours without sleep, he’ll drink his coffee black.
He’s not exactly adverse to touch at all - or at least, not touch meant to hurt - but he’s not really used to a lot of it, and is always uncomfortable with it when it comes from someone he doesn’t know or trust well. The only exception he’ll make is for civilians who require the comfort or reassurance, and even then, it’s mostly for children. He's more comfortable with people he knows well, though, and he'll talk to those people a lot more as well.
Tim’s also very neat and orderly - it’s not Obsessive-Compulsive, but it is pathological - but he does his best to hide it, deliberately leaving things laying around or tipped over (still in order) despite it annoying him so that he looks like just a normal kid. He does it less lately, but his need to hide is nearly as ingrained as the need to be neat by now.
POWERS: N/A
STANDARD SKILLS/ABILITIES: Tim has been trained in multiple forms of martial arts by Bruce Wayne, Lady Shiva, and Dick Grayson - among others - and is very highly proficient. He's not exactly one of the world's greatest martial artist yet, true, but he certainly seems to be heading that way. And nine times out of ten, chances are pretty high that Tim will either kick your ass wholesale or keep you at a stalemate until Batman and/or Nightwing show up. Then they’ll kick your ass wholesale. Tim prefers a “whatever works” approach to combat, even if “whatever works” is less martial arts and more flat out street fighting, and he isn’t above trickery and fighting dirty. Giving him a bō automatically levels him up by five.
While Tim came pre-installed with mad computer skills and l33t hacking ability, and with Barabara’s guidance, he’s only gotten better since then. He’s a natural hand at anything technological, both in hardware and software, and he loves learning about it all. Don’t tell Batman, but his favorite hero is actually Ted Kord, the Blue Beetle – Tim can only hope that he’ll be half that good with tech someday. Helping Batman with the Batmobile is making him love mechanics just as much.
Tim is wickedly, crazily smart – he tends to catch onto just about any subject he wants to learn with relative ease, and he can retain all the information with near-perfect recall. Detective work comes to him the most easily, perhaps unsurprisingly, and he’s incredibly observant. In a fight, he’s just as liable to out-think his opponent to catch them in a trap as he is to beat them in straight combat, and he has a very strong grasp on strategy and tactics. He needs practice and training to really excel, but he’s got mentors for that. He’s still learning a lot of things, but at his age, that’s okay. He know he has plenty of time and really great teachers. Anything Batman thinks he needs to know, Tim will learn.
Also, Tim is an excellent artist. He prefers photography, but he can use more or less any medium well.
WEAKNESSES/LIMITATIONS: Tim is prone towards insecurity – he really, really wants to be good enough, but sometimes he just finds it impossible that he ever will be. Guilt can get to him sometimes, too, particularly when it comes to keeping important secrets from people he feels he owes his loyalty to. The guilt will eat at him, make sleeping and eating difficult prospects, but it won’t stop him from keeping the secrets he feels need to be kept. He’ll also keep injuries or illness secret sometimes, in an effort to keep people from worrying or to keep from just plain letting them down. Which, considering his occasionally poor self-preservation instincts, can be more than a little troublesome.
He can also tend to be awkward with people, especially strangers, and as observant as he is about people’s actions and behaviours towards other people, he’s far, far less adept at noticing when these things are directed at him. Unless you’re hostile. He’s just as good at noticing things as usual when there’s a chance you might kill him.
And he’s nosy. Very nosy. If he’s curious about something, he’ll generally find a way to discover what he wants to know, even if there's a chance it could land him in trouble.
HISTORY
Jack Drake was the heir to the newly Fortune 500 company Drake Industries , and a well-respected archeologist and businessman both when he met fellow archeologist and historian Janet Draper, a fiercely beautiful – and fiercely intelligent – woman at an opening at the Archaeological Museum of Iraklion in Crete, Greece. The romance that followed was like something out of a modern day fairy tale, full of exotic locales, intriguing mysteries, royalty both modern and historical, grand parties, opulence, and, after three years of dating, an absolutely gorgeous wedding.
After their honeymoon tour of Europe, the newlyweds returned to Jack’s hometown of Gotham City and purchased an estate in the outskirt of Bristol to build their dream home on. Their timing was good - just a few months after their new home’s completion, Jack and Janet had their first and only child: Timothy Jackson Drake.
Tim’s youngest years were spent mostly with a succession of nannies, as his parents had a habit of firing the last every time they returned home from their trips in order to look after him themselves. But, more absorbed in their work, both business and archeological, and each other than they were interested in Tim, Jack and Janet were rarely home for more than a total four or five months over an entire year, stopping home only for weeks or days at a time between trips. Even when they were home, their attention was largely occupied by something they deemed a higher priority. As the quality of the nannies hired tended to vary – Janet sometimes forgot to hire someone until the last minute, and didn’t have time to be choosy – Tim learned fast to look after himself as much as possible. He also learned to savor the time and attention his parents actually afforded him.
It was during one such instance that Jack and Janet brought a six year old Tim to see Haly’s Circus. In order to commemorate the event, since it was Tim’s first time at a circus, and to make sure Tim knew that all the performers were just regular people and nothing to be afraid of (which Tim wasn’t, but didn’t want to tell his parents and risk hurting their feelings since they were so convinced he was), Janet approached the circuses’ headlining acrobat act, the Flying Graysons, for a photo. The Graysons agreed, and Tim was introduced to their son, Dick. Dick Grayson was the kindest, most amazing person ever, in Tim’s opinion, and it hit him hard when he saw the older boy’s parents die. That night also marked the first time Tim ever saw Batman, and though he was terrified at first, his fears quickly subsided when he saw the hero comforting Dick over his loss.
It was, perhaps, inevitable that it would happen: Janet forgot to hire Tim a new nanny entirely. It didn’t occur to her at all until half an hour before she and Jack had to catch a flight for Tel Aviv, and finding someone to watch the seven-year-old Tim for the two months they’d be gone on that kind of sort notice was just impossible. Finally, she wound up promising the housekeeper a bonus to just check in on Tim a couple of times a day and ensure he had until she could make other arrangements from abroad. Tim, in the meantime, would have to look after himself.
The ‘other arrangements’ were never made.
When, on their return home, they found that Tim had managed to do just fine with the bare-bones arrangement, Jack and Janet decided to leave it be – it was simpler than going through the whole process of hiring new nannies, and Tim didn’t mind. So instead, they hired someone to keep the kitchen stocked, a driver to get Tim to and from school and whatever extracurriculars he chose to take, and instructed the house staff to keep an eye out for him. It was lonely, not having anyone around just for him anymore, but Tim thought it was a fair trade off: it meant his parents called and e-mailed more often.
The Batman was a more steady presence in Tim’s life, in a manner of speaking. He was a dark solace to a lonely boy in need of a hero (because of course a hero would care, no matter what), and when the sunny boy wonder Robin joined his side, Tim was very much hooked. He spent years learning how to read between the lines of stories and news reports to follow the Batman through the news. The day that there was actual [i[footage[/quote][/i] of his heroes was a red letter day if there ever was one in Tim’s book, and he was ecstatic to watch it.
And then Robin did a quadruple somersault. Just like that, Tim knew who Robin was. It wasn’t much of a leap from there to figure out Batman’s identity, too. Once he was in on the secret, it wasn’t hard to find some actual evidence to back his deductions up. Dick was still the kindest person Tim had ever known, and finding him in Robin was a comfort. He redoubled his efforts to follow the pair more effectively, taking up his camera and climbing through the city like an expansive, extremely dangerous jungle gym in search of the best angles and lighting. The pictures he took were like a lifeline - certainly there was no one at home to care that an eight-year-old boy was running around the streets of the world’s most dangerous city until the wee hours of the morning - and he liked the adventure and challenge of it. Gotham was a different world at night. He also worked to hone his computer skills: learning how to hack into other computers to help him solve the cases Batman was working on, ways to get around security systems so he could trail the vigilantes easier. Batman and Robin weren’t just imaginary friends anymore; they were real people, people he knew, if only distantly. They became almost like a surrogate family, despite never knowing that Tim even existed.
It was through the lens of his camera and through word of mouth that Tim watched Dick break away from Bruce to become Nightwing, moving to New York to work with the Titans full time. That was also how he met the new Robin, Jason Todd. Jason was so very different from Dick, more pure strength and slightly less grace, but Tim could hardly blame him for that. No one, but no one, could move like Dick did; Dick moved like he was born to it, and not even Batman himself could match him. Jason was cool, though, and after meeting him at a gala Tim’s parents brought him to, Tim learned to be fond of the new Robin very quickly. It was devastating when Jason died. Even worse was watching the effect the loss was having on Bruce. Batman was getting steadily more erratic - more dangerous to both himself and to others, reckless and careless to the extreme. He was missing things, important things, and Tim finally had to start giving him new, more obvious clues in order to point the way. When Tim finally decided that that course of action wasn’t helping and wasn’t a long-term solution - Batman was a better detective than Tim was by far, and Tim was still sometimes wrong - he went looking for Dick.
Tim had taken several trips out to New York to see Nightwing at work during school vacations, when no one would realize he’d gone, so getting around wasn’t an issue. Actually locating Dick, however, was a little tougher - he wasn’t at Titans Tower, or at home. Tim finally tracked him down to Haly’s Circus and got down to business: he had to come back to Gotham, to be Robin again. Batman needed a Robin. Dick agreed to returning to Gotham easily enough, but becoming Robin again? He refused. Bring Tim back with him to the Batcave, Dick went to help Batman with Two-Face. Worried for them both and with a little convincing from Alfred, Tim donned the Robin uniform and was able to rescue both of his childhood heroes and help save the day. The thirteen-year-old also became the new Robin - on a trial basis only, Bruce stipulated.
Tim trained for months with Bruce, Dick, and Alfred, both physically and mentally, never once going out in the field. It was incredibly intense, though it turned out Tim knew far more about computers and the like than all three older men combined by this point.
Tim didn’t mind being stuck in the Cave at first. His primary job was, after all, to keep Batman grounded - he was a constant reminder to Bruce that he needed to be cautious with his own safety, because Tim was depending on him. But after Tim’s parents’ plane went down in Haiti and they were both kidnapped by the Obeah Man, it was much harder for him to do nothing: Jack had come back from the encounter comatose. Janet came back in a casket. Tim persevered as best he could, though, trying to obey orders. But when he solved a case involving the Scarecrow and couldn’t get a hold of Batman to warn him about the danger, Tim couldn’t do it anymore - he had to go help, even if it meant getting fired.
Instead, it got him a new uniform.
Bruce had assured Tim that he was ready to become Robin - he was looking for someone with smarts, not just guts, and Tim, he claimed, had those and more - but Tim was a little more uncertain. It was what he had wanted, yes, but he’d be defending himself and others out there, and he wasn’t entirely confident he’d be able to do it as well as he wanted to. As Bruce expected him to. For his final bit of intensive training, Bruce sent Tim overseas, where his first stop would be Paris to learn under the Chinese martial arts master Rahul Lama. It didn’t quite work out as planned: just a few weeks in, Tim ran afoul of King Snake, a criminal underlord. King Snake was, in turn, being shadowed by Lady Shiva - one of the world’s greatest martial artists and most deadly assassins. In their pursuit of Snake, Shiva ended up joining Tim and a man named Clyde Rawlins (who wanted revenge against Snake for his family’s death) and, seeing potential in him, taking Tim under her wing as a student. It was her who insisted Tim begin using a weapon, and offered him a choice from her armory. Tim chose the bō: it was primarily non-lethal. Shiva was disappointed, but let the choice stand.
Tim and Clyde stayed with Shiva for over a month while she trained Tim to really fight. She was extremely thorough in her lessons, particularly in hand-to-hand and the bō, since those were what Tim would be using the most. It was as much for Shiva’s pride as it was for Tim’s benefit; she had a high reputation to uphold, and no student of hers was going to be anything less than lethal.
When they finally moved on to take down Snake, they found that he wasn’t just dealing in heroin, like they’d thought. He was also planning to release a particularly virulent strain of the bubonic plague. The trio followed Snake to Hong Kong, where he planned on releasing the disease. Shiva continued Tim’s training there while they planned their assault. At the final confrontation, however, Tim refused to follow Shiva’s orders to kill Snake, and returned to Bruce’s side in Gotham. Now he felt ready to be Robin.
Batman had strict orders for his new Robin, however: whenever Tim came across a known killer, he was to retreat immediately and call for help. That wasn’t always doable, like when the Joker started on a spree while Batman was out of reach on JLA business and Nightwing away with the Titans, leaving Tim to deal with him alone (what was he supposed to do? Just let the Joker keep killing?), but he managed alright.
Tim only started really working on his own after Bane broke Bruce's back, however, since Jean-Paul Valley chased him out of the Cave. He worked mostly in Gotham Heights and the nearby neighborhoods, staying mostly out of AzBat's way until Bruce's eventual return. He worked with Dick until Bruce returned to the cowl for good, though he also continued his solo work.
His role during the first Clench epidemic was two-fold, as he was sent out of Gotham during the plague's beginning to hunt down a survivor of a different outbreak. He teamed up with Catwoman for the hunt, but has to return to Gotham before the survivor was found. From there, he turned to helping with the rioters - and got the Clench himself for his troubles. He spent the rest of the epidemic in the Cave, being cared for by Alfred, and was only spared dying because Azrael located a cure in time. Despite his weakened state, Tim returned to assisting Batman and the others with the aftermath. During the second, he was in a race against time: if they couldn't find a cure for the new strain, then the virus would reactivate in Tim's body and kill him. Luckily, they did manage, and Tim got to break into the Louvre, fight ninja, and stop Ra's al Ghul from releasing the virus worldwide, to boot.
During the Genesis crisis, Tim failed to save a criminal drowning, and despite the fact that the hood had been trying to kill him moments earlier, the failure haunted him. After assisting Nightwing in stopping a war, he requested to be dropped back off in Paris, needing a sabbatical to sort himself out again. He went to train with the Iron Master, and not long after, got caught up in helping one of his fellow students. This sent him into another war zone, and more encounters with Lady Shiva and King Snake, but it did ultimately accomplish was Tim had set out for: he was ready to be Robin properly again.
He was on the plane when the Cataclysm struck, and though his flight was diverted to Bludhaven, Tim booked it back to Gotham to lend a hand.
WRITING SAMPLE
Project Cadmus’ main labs were in Iowa. Specifically, eastern Iowa. From a security standpoint, it was a good place to be: the wide, open plains and total lack of anything made it pretty much impossible for anything to approach via land or sky without being seen, and the plain two story building was heavily fortified, with three rings of progressively more barbed, electrified fencing. Each ring has its own patrol of armed guards and attack dogs, and the security on the building itself covered both the ground-level and the rooftop, all of which was organized in a series of staggered, randomized patterns. Ground sensors were buried in a net six feet down to prevent tunneling attempts, and the walls of the building itself were made of concrete blocks reinforced with titanium struts. Inside, more guards patrolled. Motion detectors and laser grids secured the elevators with calibrated pressure plates at the bottom of each bay, and twenty-four hour surveillance covered each and every stairwell, as well as most of the rest of the grounds and building. Authorized entry required stopping at for different checkpoints, a security badge, and both a fingerprint and retina scan on file before even getting to the front door. Unauthorized entry was met with lethal force.
Seriously, there were even signs on the outer most ring of fencing. Trespassers will be shot and everything. There was a Lord of the Rings joke in there somewhere, Robin just knew it. Either that or Star Wars.
Everything could be related back to Star Wars sooner or later.
Still. Robin didn’t really care to get shot. Lucky for him, however, the electrical station that housed the main transformers supporting the grid in this area had a lot less security.
“Robin,” Batman murmured beside him, and Robin took a silent, steady breath, making himself relax before getting into position and nodding. Batman hit the detonator. Fifteen miles away, the device wired into the electrical station’s mainframe activated. It took thirty seconds to hit the labs, and Batman and Robin were already moving when the floodlights went down, out of the small copse of trees and over the first fence, armor and gauntlets more than enough protection from the barbed wire, then fast across the gap to the second. A quick toss of a pellet of sleeping gas to down the guard on the other side, then up and over the second and third. They grappled to the building’s roof, splitting up to take the guards there from the shadows, Robin moving into the elevator mechanical room and through the grating to the elevator shaft. The electricity went back up a second later, and Robin got attached his line to the winch to start the ride down to meet the elevator itself.
He was on his own from here. Batman hadn’t liked it, but this was the cleanest, quietest way in, and Robin was the only one who fit through the grating fast enough.
Eight floors down, Robin touched silently down on the elevator roof and loosed his line, glancing briefly up as he did. It was official – he was in the underground lab facilities. Now he needed a computer terminal he could hack into and download the information he needed from. He startled a little as the elevator started to move again, catching his balance quickly and dropping into a crouch. Down. They were going down, and Robin counted floors.
Nine… Ten… Eleven… Twelve… Thirteen… Fourteen… Fifteen…
It stopped at twenty-six. Robin waited, counting off a minute in his head to allow people to disembark. He used the next two minutes to patch into the camera on the elevator and set it to a loop, letting everyone clear off, then used the roof hatch to drop down into the elevator cab. According to the information Oracle had gotten them, there weren’t any security cameras or guards this far down, so Robin hit the button to open the doors and stepped out into the hall, cape falling closed around his shoulders in a comforting shroud.
There were a few hallways branching off of the elevator bank. Robin eyed the carpet critically for a few seconds, then picked the one with the least wear: less people used it, so there was less chance of anyone coming down. The corridor was long, wide and empty like the halls leading down into the Gotham Morgue, no doors to break the monotony. Just one, at the very end, locked against stray visitors by a DNA-encoded lock. Robin frowned briefly – he wasn’t getting past that easily – then looked up, confirming that this hall boasted the same drop ceiling that the rest of the hallway boasted. He smirked faintly.
People were stupid.
He balanced carefully on the piping as he reached back down to slide the tile he’d come through back into place, then crawled through to the other side of the door and dropped back down, landing in a crouch. Robin froze for a second as a hiss of air shattered the quiet, muscles tense. When nothing immediately happened, he straightened slowly, staring at the equipment and wiring lining the walls before slowly turning around, only briefly registering the computer terminal he glanced by.
There was a glass tube that stretched from floor to ceiling in the center of the room, the oxygenated solution inside of it diffusing the ambient light coming from the machinery encasing the top and bottom. And suspended there, floating in the center, was a boy. Robin took a brief second to hope that whatever he’d landed on to make that hiss, it hadn’t been terribly important. Or attached to an alarm.
Batman is so going to kill me.
OOC INFO
NAME: Loki
AGE: 25
E-MAIL (OPTIONAL): gotham.redbird@gmail.com
AIM (OPTIONAL):
